Shellfish harvesters is what we call ourselves.  Some people say wild pickers, but if you don’t understand the world of aquaculture at all, then wild pickers just sounds really bizarre.

 

One of my dear friends and I taught surf lessons together, and for years, he kept nudging me very gently, saying  “You should come out, I think you’d really like oystering.”  I started doing it, and I love it.

 

So, I went out with friends who had been picking for a while, just to learn safety, where sinkholes were, where not to walk.  There’s a black mud in Wellfleet Harbor that’s really sticky.  You can get stuck pretty easily, so you need to learn how to twist your boot a certain way to not get stuck by yourself, and how to keep your phone battery alive, so if you do get stuck, you can call someone. And then it’s just going out and getting experience of really just developing the eyes for oysters, and the eyes for the right kind of oysters, the right size.

 

I’d say the hardest condition to go out in is a combination of temperature and wind: when it’s 29 degrees and a brutal north wind that feels really raw on your skin and can kind of just hit you down to the bones. But that’s also part of it. I don’t think there’s any activity that anybody loves or does where there isn’t a harsher, more brutal side that balances out all of the wonderful qualities that it brings to the table.

 

To live by the tide is to live by the moon is to live by Mother Nature. And though it can cause an erratic schedule, there’s something really unique to being a part of this community, where you are the only people up at 4 am in January, standing outside in the water, waist deep.  Even though we are all very solitary and picking off by ourselves, there’s a kinship not only with each other as humans, but with the ocean and with what she can provide for us.